The trailer for the new Michael Bay (A Quiet Place, The Purge) produced pandemic thriller, Songbird has premiered. Directed by Adam Mason (The Devil's Chair) and starring K.J Apa (Riverdale) and Sofia Carson (Descendants) alongside Craig Robinson (This Is The End), Bradley Whitford (Get Out, The Cabin in the Woods), Peter Stormare (Fargo, Constantine), Alexandra Daddario (Texas Chainsaw), Paul Walter Hauser and Demi Moore (Ghost).
The film looks to present an exaggerated version of the real world Covid-19 pandemic with Covid-23, a more deadly virus that has caused much of the world to go into a far longer lockdown, and harsher punishments for those who break the rules. The trailer gave me a The Purge type vibe, with a crazed marshall and his biosuit cronies looking to forcibly evict tenants from a building suspected of containing an infected woman. I'm not sure what I feel about this one, on the one hand its themes might be easier to identify with, having such similarities to what is going on in the real world. On the other hand though I don't know anyone who isn't sick to death of hearing about Covid and am not sure if that is something people would want to see. Still, a single trailer is far too little to pass judgement on a movie and so I will keep an open mind.
Songbird is the first feature film to be made during Covid-19 in Los Angeles and is the first major Hollywood film made about the Coronavirus.
Goodnight, Halloween is a short thriller that comes from Luther Bhogal-Jones (Black Spot, Creak). Despite featuring monsters this isn't so much a horror, but does something that is both retro in feel while also being engaging.
The 13 minute short takes place in an alternate reality in which all the creatures of Halloween have always co-existed alongside man. In the 1980's a new government policy has been enforced which allows humans to exterminate these monsters without fear of consequence. The short picks up a year after this bill, with the majority of monsters either dead or in hiding. One of the few surviving monsters is Konel (Jean-Daniel Byrne/Andrew Calverley) who is in the process of desperately trying to upload a file to the web which will prove the governments genocidal program. He is close to succeeding in his mission, but with government agents closing in, and a traitor among the surviving monsters it is a race against time.
Apparently Goodnight, Halloween was 14 years in the making, initially thought up when Skype was just becoming a thing. The style of the short felt very 2020 with the three main characters separate from each other, conversing via a video call. It was also timely that the government leader here seemed coincidently similar to Donald Trump, while characters essentially being locked down in their various hideouts rang true to this crazy year as well. I admit it was a bit hard to take it seriously due to the idea of monsters using technology to communicate, especially when the protagonist is a pumpkin headed leaf creature! Thankfully his design is pretty cool looking, while the witch and vampire he talks to are cloaked in digital effects to reduce their visibility.
Being set in the eighties there is some great synth music going on, I liked the look of everything as well. The alternate part of the world meaning despite being the eighties the internet exists, and also for some reason the letter 'C' doesn't seem to exist. There was a cool design for the computer screens combing retro graphics with more modern technology.
From my memory of Bhogal Jone's previous shorts this seemed the most polished and well filmed. The set design and special effects were both pleasing, and the story, while simple, still remained thrilling. Goodnight, Halloween is free to view on YouTube, so I suggest you check it out and see for yourself the unique blend of styles used for this paranoid digital thriller.
I have long enjoyed the Far Cry series of first person action video games and it is one of the few ongoing series in which I have stayed up to date, having played all eight entries. None of the previous games have been reviewed on this site (aside from the zombie DLC for Far Cry 5), after all they are action games and not horror, but with last year's Far Cry: New Dawn enjoying a post apocalyptic setting it meant that it can get reviewed, as that setting is something I am always happy to write about. It's impossible to talk about this game without spoiling the ending to Far Cry 5, so beware of spoilers for that one here.
New Dawn is a direct sequel to the fifth game and takes place 17 years after a nuclear war decimated the world, an event termed 'the Collapse' by the survivors. Hope County in America fared better than many other places, with it felt that being situated in a valley protected it from the worst of the impact of the bombs, while the high amount of prepper bunkers in the area meant more people were able to survive. Over many years two groups emerged who were able to bring back some semblance of normality. The south of the valley saw the emergence of the township of Prosperity where all were welcomed. The north of the valley saw a new community called New Eden, made up of people who have rejected all forms of technology. For years all prospered, until a vast roving group of bandits calling themselves The Highwaymen, and led by twin sisters Mickey (voiced by Cara Ricketts - Far Cry 5, Far Cry: Primal) and Lou (Leslie L. Miller) invaded the county. The group rampaged across the land, kidnapping, murdering and extorting everyone they could. The daughter of the leader of Prosperity, Carmina (Reina Hardesty) had heard about a man named Rush (Patrick Garrow - Slasher) whose group had brought law and order back to many places in the U.S and so set out to find him. She was successful and he agrees to bring a train loaded with supplies and his best soldiers to help defeat the Highwaymen, but he gets ambushed, the train destroyed, the supplies stolen, and everyone killed. All except Rush who is kidnapped by the sisters, and the Captain of his soldiers who escapes and makes her (or his) way to Prosperity.
While this is a direct sequel to Far Cry 5 it is not a main line game, and was released with a budget price. It took roughly ten to fifteen hours to complete and I would say is roughly half the size of 5. The game takes place on the same map as before, but it is vastly changed up so that it is always a cool surprise when you realise a location you have gone to is the same place as the previous game. Despite being post apocalyptic the game world is a beautiful place, full of wildlife, trees and flowers, the locations themselves show the effects of what has gone on. Many buildings lay abandoned, or buried by the earth, the others have been daubed in the Highwaymen's token bright pink graffiti (a great touch being the gangster rap music that blasts out of loud speakers at these places). This is an open world game in which the player is free to explore much of the map from the get go. There are plenty of side missions to do, such as recruiting characters who can fight alongside you, solving little treasure maps to get resources, taking over enemy outposts, and even travelling to seven different American locations (such as Alcatraz) to go on supply runs. There is plenty to do, but the smaller scope of the game can be seen with such ideas as being encouraged to retake enemy outposts, with the only difference being the enemies holding them being stronger. You get perks with which to upgrade your character (such as the ability to take out enemies using stealth) and also currency that you can use to upgrade Prosperity, which unlocks the ability to craft more powerful vehicles and weapons and increase your base health amount.
Flowers for the Dead is a short horror film that comes from John Whitaker and Richard Markworth (The Isolation Horrors). It features the music of Whitaker's 1i2c and at points it feels like it was almost going to change into one of his ever interesting music videos.
Markworth plays Peter Baxter, a conman who dreams of relaunching his career as a paranormal investigator. A young woman, Holly has recently gone missing in the area of Abbots Wood, which is purported to be one of the most haunted woods in England. Peter sees this as the angle he needs to get popular again. While he is sure the girl is actually safe and sound, he intends to pretend that he has contacted her spirit in the woods. He has roped in an acquaintance he met in prison, George (Alan Austen) to help film him carrying out his investigation so that he can put it up online later. Once at the woods things start to get complicated, and it starts to seem like there may actually be some truth behind the wood's haunted reputation...
Flowers For The Dead is nearly 27 minutes long and roughly split into two sections. The first ten minutes are mostly made up of a conversation George and Peter are having in a car. Both characters have an entertaining exchange of words, with the talkative Peter keeping things moving. The second part all takes place in woodland, which looked great on camera. Throughout there are cutaways to the camera travelling through the woods, with 1i2c's urgent pounding music playing out, these moments were the highlight for me, especially the final time this is used at the films conclusion. The story was simple, but it was a fun idea and it went to some places I didn't expect. There was also a random subplot about a crazed man wandering the woods. Mostly this is all played comically but there was at least one or two parts in the film that really were creepy, it would have been nice to get a few more moments like those.
Flowers for the Dead was an entertaining, heavy on dialogue short, with a fantastic soundtrack, great lighting and a memorable lead in Markworth.
Seeds of the Dead is a zombie horror novel with a humorous edge to it. It was written by Andy Kumpon along with Gary Malik and takes a gore soaked look at the issues of GMO foods through the lens of a small town undead outbreak. Despite being on the lighter side of things this still features plenty of death and violence, even if the sometimes comic book like depictions of good and evil mean this can feel a bit light on the horror side.
Peter Malik is a scientist working for the powerful Moonstar Foods Inc. who specialise in GMO foods. Peter decided to leave his small hometown to work for them, genuinely hoping he would be able to help the world. Instead, one day he is horrified when the latest batch of food he had been working on transformed the labrats into flesh hungry monsters. His sociopathic boss siblings, Richard and Sofia are pleased with this outcome and make Peter a generous offer in exchange for his continuing assistance. Given time to contemplate things he is granted some leave, with which he travels back to his hometown to see his parents. Not able to be party to the unethical experiments, he publicly speaks out about Moonstar Foods, which turns out to be a bad move. The powerful company swiftly cause an undead outbreak in his town via contaminated food, doing it both to punish Peter, but to also show potential clients what they are capable of with their biological weapon. Cut off from the outside world, Peter and a handful of other survivors must find a way to both survive the outbreak, but also find a way with which they can escape the doomed town.
There are no real surprises with Seeds of the Dead, it isn't going to stand out as something unique, and the way events play out fit in well with the tropes of the zombie genre. Sometimes that is no bad thing, sure I have read so many books like this, but this is still entertaining, and feature plenty of the walking dead with a few things to set them apart from others. This was written in a simple style, again no bad thing as it means that events can keep going and going without getting too bogged down. From the start of the outbreak to the finish there is no downtime, characters bouncing from one situation to another. Along the way characters make noble sacrifices, while others have more abrasive roles, of course at some point a character is going to be bitten and hide their wound, as is written in stone for this genre. Characters and situations here were pretty black and white, a couple of characters get some decent development, in particular one who I disliked to begin with but who really came into their own. Others are not so well developed, in particular the antagonists. Richard and Sofia are so comically evil that it is hard to really take them seriously as a threat. Anderson is a hired goon who seemed to be the character type of a recurring unstoppable villain, but I never felt he made as much of an impact as he should have done. He pops up every now and again but he really doesn't get enough page time to build him up into as memorable a foe as I would have liked. Continuing with the black and white feel is Moonstar Foods where no attempt is made to give them layers, they are just an evil company. Then at some point the hacking group 'Anonymous' get inserted into the story, made out to be good and just rather than the more neutral reputation the collective have in the real world.
Onto the zombies. These are more disgusting rather than scary, they are often described secreting a slime type substance of pus and other bodily fluids from all their orifices. I don't really like icky stuff but it did lead to one of the more interesting ideas, Everywhere the zombies have travelled gets coated in an almost slug like trail of slime, this impacts the story at several points as both characters and vehicles slide around on this stuff which makes a dangerous situation even more so. Initially it seemed these rotting dead were a scary foe, with their body parts still able to function when severed. Around the halfway mark a weakness is discovered and while this made for some fun moments it did drastically remove the threat level these shamblers conjured.
Seeds of the Dead may not break the mould when it comes to the zombie genre, but it was still an entertaining read, one whose simplicity works in keeping things always entertaining from the beginning to the end. Seeds of the Dead was released on 29th June thanks to Killerbeam Entertainment.
Darkness in Tenement 45 is a psychological horror that takes place entirely within the confines of the titular 'tenement 45'. It can also be described as a post apocalyptic movie, but with the unique concept of being set in the 1950's rather than in the future. This was directed and written by Nicole Groton (additional crew on Zombieland: Double Tap, X-Men: Apocalypse) in what was her first feature length movie in those roles.
It is 1953 during the first Cold War between the United States and Russia, and after a suspected biological weapons attack the inhabitants of tenement 45 following government guidelines have barricaded themselves in their building sealing up all doors and windows to stop any potential gas getting in. They fear that the outside world is now uninhabitable, but with dwindling supplies they are forced to send someone out to gather resources. The adults hold regular meetings, presided over by Felix (David Labiosa - The Entity) and the stern Martha (Casey Kramer - Dexter), but it is when Felix decides to volunteer himself to leave the building that things begin to devolve. As the days go by and there is no sign of Felix's return Martha gets increasingly paranoid and more and more controlling. The children, led by Martha's troubled 16 year old niece Joanna (Nicole Tompkins - voice of Jill Valentine in the Resident Evil 3 remake) and Walter (Keyon Bowman - Fox Pointe) decide they need to take matters into their own hands, especially when there are hints that the outside world may not be as deadly as they have all been led to believe...
Even before things went sour here I had a good idea of where this would go. For a film that takes place in a singular location it was important that the characters be more than just stereotypes and with this it mostly succeeds. Much of the film is shown from the children's perspective, thinking back I'm not sure there is a single scene that doesn't have at least one of the younger cast in it. With Martha in particular it was easy to see the dark path she would go on. With Felix gone and her in complete control it is the old adage that 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'. It would be unfair to say it is just the adults who have their demons to them. Joanna is a prime example of this, the 'darkness' in the title refers literally to the increasingly hostile situation in the tenement building, but it also is what Joanna has termed her mental affliction. She is troubled, with it being hinted at that she had experienced psychotic episodes in the past, which leads to the viewer seeing quite a few of her nightmares which include quite a bit of self harm. Felix's son Tomás (Nicolas Aleksandr Bolton) is another flawed individual, his age, and being confined to a building with so few others means he begins to take an unsavoury interest in his older sister.
Back in the middle of the first lockdown, in April of this year a great little indie UK short horror anthology The Isolation Horrors was released. Each of the shorts was created in isolation. End of October is a new short anthology, produced by M.W Daniels, that features three of the same directors from that, and follows a similar format in that much of what is shown here again predominantly features single characters in what overall felt much more experimental in style.
The wraparound story was hard to fathom, featuring a man (Daniels) watching a show on his laptop, intercut with a woman dressed as a cat lounging around for reasons I couldn't understand, led to a very confusing first three minutes. Each of the three short films are introduced by a woman broadcasting an online show. First is The Castrator which was directed by Nicolai Kornum (Undertaker, Umbilichord) and stars David Cobbald and Alain Falzon as a couple who are working on a comic book together. Later that evening one of them appears to have a break with reality and takes on the persona of a character they had created together, leading to a bloodily violent conclusion. I liked the page tear effect, as well as the strong coloured backgrounds that made this feel like a living comic book at times. I did struggle occasionally to make out what characters were saying due to thick accents, more a problem of my hearing than anything else, but did mean I had to replay a few scenes to understand what was being said.
The middle film comes from John Whitaker (the composer 1i2c) who both directed and starred in Last Confession. I confess to initially not being sure about this one, shot in black and white it has Whitaker as a clearly troubled man who is sat at a table talking to himself, using repetitive phrases. This turned out to be my favourite in this anthology, it legitimately made me laugh out loud on a few occasions and does not take itself seriously. This was both weird and bizarre and I loved the sped up sequences inserted throughout displaying the manic insanity that is bubbling underneath the characters outward appearance. I also thought it was funny how this is made relevant to Halloween.
The final short is M.W Daniels's October Loner which was very experimental in feel. I confess I did not know what was happening with this one, but it was suitably creepy and uncomfortable to watch. Daniels plays a man who upon hearing a knocking at his door encounters someone very familiar to him. The final shot receding into a black background was an effective way to finish.
Each of the three shorts felt quite different to one another but all had their merits to them, though it was especially the second and third ones I really enjoyed. I confess I didn't really understand what the wraparound story was trying to do. Overall though, as I always say, it is hard to go too wrong with an anthology. Getting a second one from these directors in the same year as their first was a nice surprise, it would be awesome if this became a regular thing as there are always good ideas used and is cool to see familiar faces. End of October premiered on Halloween on YouTube.
Halloween is my favourite day of the year and with good reason, it is my blogs version of Christmas. I am writing this review on that day, having just seen Mark Tonderai's (The House at the End of the Street, Hush) latest horror film, Spell. This was written by Kurt Wimmer (writer of the latest Children of the Corn movie). With the exception of one cast member this features an entirely black cast, which did feel quite unique with regards to horror movies.
Marquis T. Woods (Omari Hardwick - Zack Snyder's upcoming Army of the Dead, Kick-Ass) is a successful lawyer who feels like he has made it in life. He has a very well paid job, a beautiful wife, and two children who will never have to experience the trials he did during his troubled childhood. He receives a phone call one day and learns that his estranged, abusive father has passed away, Marquis, with the encouragement of his wife decides to head back to his childhood home of rural Appalachia to attend the funeral, and decides to get there using his private plane. During a thunderstorm he loses control of his plane and wakes up to discover himself in a bed in the attic of a strange woman, Eloise (Loretta Devine - Grey's Anatomy). She deflects all his questions relating to his missing family and promises him she will help him recover from his injuries, but it seems her intentions may not be as pure as she makes them out to be as Marquis soon discovers he is a prisoner in her remote home.
It has been a while since I saw a horror that was as unapologetically happy to reside in that genre as this one is. It gave me a real vibe of films from ten years or so back, and I don't mean that as a slight. Gone are all the jump scares and supernatural terror and instead this is an up close story about one man's attempt to escape the nightmare he has found himself in. Eloise is a practitioner of Hoodoo magic, her speciality being Hoodoo dolls also known as a 'Boogity'. This is a doll created in the image of the person it is for, even including blood, hair and other things in its creation. An early question being if there is any truth to Eloise's beliefs in the power these creations can grant the owner. The core rhythm of Spell is Marquis attempts to escape from the attic he is in. With this rural setting I was really reminded of one of the DLC expansions for the video game Resident Evil 7: Biohazard in which you have to try and escape a similar situation. A big theme of the movie as a whole is that of escape, and accepting your roots. Marquis had spent his whole life in his dogged pursuit to forget about where he came from, who he used to be. The message here being that you should never forget this, and that acceptance leads to greater strength.
Some real strange news I have picked for today, fitting as it features cult actor Bill Oberst Jr. (DIS, Coyote). The actor's face is now on a Halloween T-shirt on Amazon. This is to be the first in a series of branded horror products being developed by the Emmy Award and Lon Chaney Award-winner.
The head shot is by Los Angeles photographer Michael Helms. Oberst Jr. says of the photoshoot "He calls me up one day wanting to play with some iconic Hollywood character types. So I'm in his studio and he says 'Backwoods Killer!' Well, I started thinking of lines like 'Looks like ya'll gonna be here for the night' and boy, that drool just started flowing."
The T-shirt can be found on Amazon in the USA, UK, German, Italy and Japan marketplaces. The next branded products for Amazon will include a Circus of the Dead diorama, custom horror dolls and the return of The Bill Oberst Jr. Severed Ear. More than anything though this post was an excuse to mention his brilliant podcast; Bill Oberst Jr's Gothic Goodnight which once gave me and my blog a surprise shoutout.
This month I have been trialling the reintroduction of news posts detailing singular news items. This means I am now putting out a new blog post every single day, shall see how long I can keep that going! Despite this my inbox is still full of news items, and so shall be putting a bunch of them into a monthly news post still. Don't take it to mean this compilation of news stories means they don't deserve their own post, more that having a full time day job it means I just don't have the time to write individual posts for each bit of news I receive.
The Dead Ones is now out on DVD/Blu-ray and digital. I said of this school based horror "From start to finish the nightmarish tone remains consistent, thanks to some inventive moments and a great looking set." Similarly titled My Dead Ones comes to iTunes and Google Play on October 31st. This Brazilian psychological slasher film also came to Vimeo on October 26th. From Midnight Releasing, Evil Under the Skin is now streaming on VOD platforms, including all the ones you would expect. I said of this "I have to give kudos for where this eventually ended up."
Adrian Tofei's standout Romanian found footage horror Be My Cat: A Film for Anne has been released on DVD in two versions, one featuring the new poster and one with the original poster. Both include 12 minutes of extra footage, closed captions, improved image and sound. This horror was partially improvised and had Tofei method acting for the duration, partially living in character. The creator is currently working on a trilogy which includes this film, We Put the World to Sleep (in post-production) and Dr. Frankenstein (in development). Signed copies of the DVD can be purchased on Tofei's site.
The follow up to supernatural thriller Mayday was announced on September 17th. Tara Reid and Robert LaSardo have been added to the film's roster. The synopsis for this has air marshall Adam Anderson (Michael Pare) on board a flight when a strange smoke engulfs the plane. He awakens to find only him and five passengers remain, and the plane running on autopilot. That sounds very much like the excellent time travel horror The Langoliers, which can only be a good thing. Mayday II is currently on Indiegogo seeking additional funds.
Habitual comes to theatres and VOD on November 13th and has been described as 'A Clockwork Orange meets Saw!' This psychological drug fueled horror is about a group of drug taking ravers who go to an underground rave party called 'Habit' at an abandoned asylum in Salem. The night changes into chaotic hallucinations with characters falling deeper into a metaphorical mind-bending hole. It certainly sounds interesting. This comes from writer/director Johnny Hickey, and allegedly during one screening of the movie an audience member on LSD ended up in a harm reduction center as a result of his experience.
Frolic Pictures have released a special batch of 20 new triple feature DVDs. These are based on the golden age of 'silent screamers and depression-era staples'. The collections features some icons such as Bela Lugosi, Max Schreck, Lon Chaney Jr, Boris Karloff, Tod Slaughter and Soledad Miranda. 'Each DVD is a one-of-a-kind experience, like going to the drive-in back in the day, except in the comfort of your own home. Every carefully curated program is 3-4 hours of shocking, bizarre, and tantalizing entertainment from a bygone era. Packed with cinematic surprises, such as pre-show shorts, trailers, and intermission cartoons'. The list is too much to go into, but some chosen at random include: Face of the Screaming Werewolf/The Wasp Woman/The Bat, King of the Zombies/Revolt of the Zombies/Teenage Zombies, and Curse of the Aztec Mummy/Sound of Horror/The Atomic Man. For more details head here.
From the creator of The Blair Witch Project comes Ithaca: A miniseries of horror. This comes from Eduardo Sanchez and season1 is now available now and can be seen for free on Man In The Arena Films YouTube Channel. The first season is made up of four chapters and is about a man's attempt to heal his broken legacy. It was inspired by Homer's Odyssey, modern mythology and includes Balinese Hindu mythology. It was made over 7 years with no budget, and with a 2 to 4 man crew. Season 1 can be seen here.
Music news now, firstly, Sharone has released a music video for her track Can We Pretend. This is the first single off the dark rock artist's upcoming album, Morbid Illusion that is due out on 28th May 2021. Her second single will be revealed on Halloween (the day this blog post goes out). Sharone says of the single "...is about living a lie, and hiding behind a facade that's destroying you from the inside out".
Sammi Doll has released the official music video for her debut single AN OM IE. This is 'an amalgamation of pounding dance beats and industrial keyboard hooks'. Sammi Doll says of the video "We filmed the video over the course of four months due to quarantine restrictions, so we had the luxury of time to build on our characters. I really gave my blood, insomnia, and tears to everything I do artistically and tend to think about the consequences later...but I knew I was committed when a frozen octopus from Seattle showed up at my front door..."
Finally, a new UK short anthology horror is due to go up on YouTube at 9pm tonight (GMT). End of October features three short films from Nicolai Kornum, John Whitaker, and M.W Daniels. Earlier in the year the three worked on a different short anthology horror, The Isolation Horrors. A review of End of October shall go up next week, it's worth a watch, so check out the premiere at 9pm today (October 31st).
Oxenfree is a combat free adventure game that is heavy on story but short on gameplay. It feels kind of like what modern day text adventure games have become. While personally I didn't feel the need to do a second playthrough, the story is set up in such a way that you would need to do so in order to get a true ending.
Alex (voiced by Erin Yvette - Firewatch) heads to the currently uninhabited Edwards Island along with her best friend, Ren (Aaron Kuban), and her new step-brother Jonas (Gavin Hammon) for a weekend of partying, as is the coming of age tradition of teenagers in her town. There she meets Clarissa and Nona, two other school mates. There is a local legend that certain radio frequencies cause supernatural events in a large cave on the island and so Alex and Jonas decide to check it out. They discover a strange 'tear' deep in the cavern and are surprised when tuning the portable radio Alex has that this tear begins to open...then all chaos breaks loose. Some time later Alex and Jonas awaken to find themselves somehow transported to the opposite side of the island. Lost and confused they eventually learn that all their friends have also been transported to random places within the island. It seems they have somehow awakened a living frequency, a force whose intentions are unclear, but which has the power to not only create time loops, but to also be able to possess Alex and her friends.
Oxenfree is a beautiful looking 2D adventure game that features vaguely ugly 3D character models. It is both the graphics and the superb soundtrack that really got me hooked. The island is split up into different areas, such as the beach, the military base and the mountains, each of which has a lovely look to it that made it seem like it had been hand built via arts and crafts. In each area you are restricted to a 2.5D path. Occasionally there are minor puzzles, such as working out how to open locked doors, and how to power on various devices, but mainly this is all about walking and talking. Over the course of the roughly five hour game you play as Alex, but often who you are with changes up. Dialogue is the main way the story plays out, with characters walking and talking constantly. Usually you are often given multiple responses to what the other characters are saying, typically agreeable, disagreeable or sarcastic and angry responses. In terms of what you actually do this is mostly just walking around, with the story playing the main draw.
Blood Immortal (directed and written by Robert Joseph Butler) is a vampire film that uses horror elements in a way which allows it to explore deeper issues than you would initially expect. I admit to expecting plenty of blood sucking and brooding here, instead at times the topics it covered felt all too real and as a result became interesting to watch. This works almost as an anthology, three interconnected stories taking place in America's past, present, and future.
At some point in the 1800's a land prospector, Mr. Duncan (Richard Tyson - Black Hawk Down, Battlefield Earth) arrives at the remote home of recently widowed Josephine (Aphrodite Nikolovski - Agramon's Gate) and her daughter Eliza (Julie Kline - Mimesis Nosferatu) with an offer. Perhaps due to recognising Josephine is dying he reveals he is a vampire and turns her, expecting her fealty. In modern day, the vampire Fiona (Jordan Trovillion - Jack Reacher) attends night classes in which she befriends her economics lecturer, lonely Patricia (Erika Hoveland - Before I Wake). This, set against a backdrop of a world on the brink of disaster due to rising pollution and impending economic collapse. Then in the near future we return to Josephine and Eliza who are struggling to survive in a world where law and order has nearly ceased to be and in which desperate people resort to desperate methods.
It was interesting to show the decline of mankind from the perspective of immortals, and it was interesting to see how issues affecting us all today could change into via a 'what-if' version of the future. This isn't a tertiary look either, the middle segment features plenty of discourse between Fiona and her lecturer (a class that Fiona excels in due to having conveniently lived the past being examined). The theme is of breakdown and how that is poisoning humanity, from pollution, to increasing self centered ruthlessness. This can be seen literally with the afflictions drinking polluted blood has on the vampires, who wish to shape mankind for everyone's benefit. There is a hopelessness and inevitability to the overarching story, both in how it can be seen where the world is going and the vampires inability to stop this, and with the addiction to blood that is the root of many problems for them.
UK based Ark Indie Productions have this year finished work on their third short horror film, See What She Did. This was directed and written by Daniel Keeble, produced by Alice Rya, and based on a story by lead actor Samantha Anderson.
In this latest short, two close friends, Cassie and Stephanie go away on a camping trip to enjoy a night of excess. Things don't go according to plan with the question arising being 'How well do you truly know someone, as well as you know yourself?' This follows on from previous films Off The Hook and The Woods Near Jacob's Farm. All three films are united by an attempt 'to take the audience out of their comfort zone with plot twists, hidden messages and plenty of subtext.'
See What She Did premieres this Halloween, and for one night only at that. To watch this follow Ark Indie Productions on Facebook and Instagram.
